The former Massachusetts governor is expressing something more than knee-jerk populism here.
The fight against the knee-jerk inclination to conduct surgery at birth is both medical and social.
We look at how to break negative habits and knee-jerk reactions, and how to make sustainable life-changes.
Primarily because it features “tiers,” which triggered a lot of knee-jerk “wedding cake” remarks.
Still, perhaps the left needs to speak out without worrying about being on the receiving end of the knee-jerk charge of racism.
The presence or absence of the knee-jerk may be a most significant symptom to the physician.
Sensibility, the knee-jerk, and plantar phenomena are normal.
The deep reflexes may also be altered, the knee-jerk being frequently absent on the affected side.
Later the affected muscles become exquisitely tender, and then atrophy, while the knee-jerk or other reflex is lost.
In some subjects the larger dose, 45 cubic centimeters, practically abolished the knee-jerk.
patellar reflex, neurological phenomenon discovered and named 1876; the figurative use appeared soon after the phrase was coined.
knee jerk n.
See patellar reflex.
modifier
: one more gesture to the knee-jerk hawks in the Congress/ Yet McDonald is no mere knee-jerk critic of the evangelicals
noun
verb
: We need less kneejerking on both sides in these arguments about the environment (1980s+)
[fr the patellar reflex, described as knee jerk by 1876]
